Talk:Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative

Eastlink performance problems

The system being promoted by Eastlink has problems coping with the vegetation and topography of Nova Scotia. Due to insufficient signal strength, the choice being offered is a 50 foot wooden pole planted next to your driveway. Restrictions regarding pole placement have made it difficult for some homeowners to accept this type of installation. In my experience, the initiative has been a waste of time, with multiple visits by technicians. I don't have figures on the true cost of a pole installation, but I suspect taxpayer dollars would have gone farther had they been invested towards upgrading landlines to DSL or ADSL. I realize this is anecdotal evidence, but I'm including it here in hopes it can be included in the article Pendragon39 (talk) 18:27, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm in much the same position (a crew is supposed to arrive later this week to assess the best location for a pole after almost a month in delays and missteps by EastLink), and I agree that the money would have been better spent investing in some sort of conventional, wired technology. That said, personal opinion and research can't be used as part of the article. That's why, despite my own bad experiences with EastLink, I've only added information that was first published in a reputable news source. Simple, factual statements (such as the need for a pole in some cases) would be welcome. More information outlining the difficulties, and/or discussing alternate methods for implementing the service are welcome if you have reputable, third party references. -Jonathon A H (talk) 19:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

What knowledge I have comes entirely from telephone conversations. It does not appear to be written down anywhere as official policy. Thus, I cannot confirm possible factual statements. Yesterday, I spoke with a pole installer and was informed that he has installed "non accessible" poles. There appears to be several definitions of what qualifies as an "accessible pole installation" depending on whether you are speaking with Eastlink, the signal testers, or the pole installers :( Pendragon39 (talk) 02:03, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I believe that still qualifies as original research. If you want to see for yourself, here's Wikipedia's policy page on the topic: Wikipedia:No original research. On a personal level, I can fully sympathize. The way EastLink has handled communication during this whole period has been absolutely horrible. The promised monthly updates that never came, the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, etc etc. Anyway, I'll stop there. - Jonathon A H (talk) 02:09, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the article could use a few images of the various delivery systems. There's a 2 litre pop-bottle sized receiver and an aerial antenna. Depending on signal strength the antenna is mounted below the eaves, at roof level, on a 15 foot telescopic pole, or atop a 50 foot pole. If the last option doesn't work, a repeater station is the next step Pendragon39 (talk) 15:24, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Images would certainly be welcome. There are a couple of images available in the commons when you search for Motorola Canopy, but only for the 2.4Ghz and 5.2Ghz systems. Nothing for the 900Mhz system EastLink and Seaside are using. If you can find some images that aren't under copyright, or are your own photos or can otherwise be used under fair use terms, then the article could benefit from it. - Jonathon A H (talk) 17:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

There's a relatively up to date (December 2015) page on Eastlink's ongoing issues at grid.referata.com and on the general problems in NS backhaul at another page there. They have plenty of links to articles in the mainstream press for anyone who cares to update this article to 2015, however, a new article on Eastlink Rural Connect would be more appropriate, as the problems being cited weren't part of this government initiative and the other providers (Seaside, Omniglobe) did not encounter them.

Unreferenced sections

There appears to be nothing wrong with these sections except that they add length, are unreferenced, and as the program has concluded, this level of detail on criticism belongs in other articles, perhaps part of sections of Internet in Canada.

VoIP use not contractually guaranteed

Eastlink had guaranteed, verbally, latencies under 100ms suitable for voice over IP, but this appears nowhere in its contracts. Eastlink does not offer its own VoIP service over its own fixed wireless connection.

Powerline networking not considered

In the process of considering how best to provide universal connectivity, powerline networking was apparently not considered although it reaches very nearly "100% of civic addresses" in Nova Scotia and has up to a thousand times higher maximum throughput (up to half a gigabit per second using G.hn or IEEE 1901 on Atheros 7400 or Gigle Networks 541 chips). In more robust outdoor broadband-over-power-line (BPL) configurations it has worked well in environments (such as Washington Island, Wisconsin, where it was specifically selected over Canopy and has performed very well [YouTube video]). IBM and IBEC have announced plans to use BPL to serve 200,000 rural Americans. However, since power lines are unshielded, powerline networking tends to interfere with other radio communication systems in the short wave bands.

NS smart grid communications potential

However, such a deployment is complicated by the fact that Nova Scotia Power is a private company - a subsidiary of Emera - although it is regulated by the government it cannot directly be ordered to provide any particular service. With the rollout of smart grid technologies the communications capabilities of Nova Scotia's grid could almost certainly allow for over-provisioning for rural broadband if this was a priority of the provincial government - under the NS government announced plans of 2010 the grid was due to be upgraded significantly before 2020. While the announced upgrades were mostly supply-sided (to accommodate distributed generation) the US National Broadband Plan has explicitly included energy monitoring and management ("goal 6", chapter 12) as a right of all consumers. The NIST smart grid standards for authentication, encryption and verifiable legal bonding credentials of service providers are suitable to let third parties manage customers' private data. Emera must meet all these standards in its US subsidiaries so to simply copy them in Nova Scotia and over-provision its internal monitoring network to provide arbitrary communications services would not be difficult.

Regulations and rights of way

Improvements are hindered by an extremely ambiguous regulatory environment in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where provincial regulators often are unaware that they, not the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, regulate access to power poles and can set tariffs for any use of these for communications. While provinces may use these to recover revenue for rights of way the province lends the power and communications firms, so far only New Brunswick Power (a directly provincially owned "crown corporation") has done this. No electric power company in the Canadian Maritimes has directly competed in communications.

Wireless upgrades by competitors

The Community Access Program (C@P) of the Nova Scotia government has, in the wake of better connectivity for most users, also shifted priorities from libraries and schools to serving community centres, provincial parks and historic sites with wireless Internet - meaning 802.11 access points. These often serve persons without home access.

The prospect of losing literally all their customers in some communities has also forced Telus, Aliant and Rogers to expand DSL and 3G, although unlimited-data plans remain as of May 2010 unavailable within NS. The most viable strictly private competing service in rural Nova Scotia is the "Turbo Hub" service offered by Rogers using the Ericsson W35, which provides some users with megabit performance, however with an extremely high (approximately $10/GB) usage price. By contrast, a theoretical 1.5 down /0.5 up Canopy link would provide, for under $50/month, about 162GB upload, 426GB download, if in full use all the time.

Misinformed edits

These edit summaries seem to indicate a lack of technical familiarity with the subject matter:

• Ds77 (talk | contribs)‎ (11,079 bytes) (→Wireless upgrades by competitors: removed sentence on eastlink cable being better, as cable internet is a shared medium just like wireless) (undo)
• 12 March 2011‎ Ds77 (talk | contribs)‎ (11,326 bytes) (→Powerline networking not considered: powerline interference with short wave)

Wired cable is not better because it is "not shared", it's better because it's much faster, not subject to antenna jitter, requires fewer truck rolls to properly maintain and has quite a bit more bandwidth. With respect to the NS service, wired cable from Eastlink is up to 250 megabits per second, and the slowest cable is about 5 megabits.

Powerline networking does not "interfere with short wave" and hasn't since the IEEE P1901 standards were finalized and supported by all the mainstream vendors including Qualcomm Atheros, one of the largest vendors of Wi-Fi chips. If this was still a problem certainly they would know. Someone is reading old nonsense of blogs about old BPL systems that are effectively not deployed any more.

Edits by Ds77 should accordingly be policed carefully. Some of those edits should probably be reviewed for technical accuracy and some of the older wording restored.

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